


Creation—ephemeral—within the confines of a form

by RevolutionaryJo, Ritterssport, Sunquistadora



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Audio Format: M4B, Audio Format: MP3, Audio Format: Streaming, F/F, Fashion & Couture, Podfic, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Length: 30-45 Minutes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-06-22 16:18:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15585822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RevolutionaryJo/pseuds/RevolutionaryJo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ritterssport/pseuds/Ritterssport, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunquistadora/pseuds/Sunquistadora
Summary: Five times fashion lead Villanelle further down the road to herself.





	Creation—ephemeral—within the confines of a form

 

  
Cover art by revolutionaryjo

**Podfic Length:** 36:31

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### Moscow, 1999.

 

“I’ve finished this one, Mama! Can I have another?” Oksana rested her chin atop the book in question, the dogeared hardcover almost entirely concealing her six-year-old frame, and gave her mother’s back her most winsome smile. That was what the well-dressed man in the used bookshop had called her, when she persuaded her mama into buying the book in the first place, and it had worked, so it must be good.

“Oksana, sweetheart, mama doesn’t have any more.” Exhaustion slowing her mother’s words, even though she’d said them hundreds of times before. “You’re going to have to find something else.”

“But I _want_ another book!” Her face hurt. She dropped the smile. Mama wasn’t even looking.

Her mother clicked her tongue, exasperation making her shoulders rigid, and looked up, her darning needle pausing in the middle of its long loops. “Why don’t you go back to your bed and read something else?”

“I don’t have anything else!” Oksana crossed her arms, chin sticking out, and prepared for battle.

She was sure her mother was going to shout, but something in her face crumpled, and, instead, she surrendered. “You can get mama’s magazines out and read them instead, then. Just this once!” she snapped, as Oksana dashed toward the bedroom, but Oksana didn’t care about that. She’d won.

Her mother kept her stash in a worn-soft paper folder under the bed. Fashion magazines, _Ptyuch_ , _OM_ , _Burda_ , _Moda_ , and, always on the bottom, the seven precious American issues. They smelled different from the Russian ones, pungent with harsher chemicals, and Oksana laid one over her face, closed her eyes, and inhaled in a darkness with tall slender shapes etched bright into the inside of her eyelids.

A moment ago, she’d wanted nothing more than to devour the written word, but now, she let the foreign text stay untranslatable symbols standing for nothing more than mysteries signposting beautiful things, and took in the images.

Cool eyes gazed straight or sidelong out of the page, eyes perfectly devoid of emotion—but still, absolutely, alive. They were like the coyotes she saw sometimes in the city, lurking behind something and waiting. Sometimes the gleam behind their eyes was the only way she spotted them. Her papa never saw them, and mama only sometimes. Watching, waiting for something to come in range.

She wanted to come in range, and let them pounce.

Oksana flipped a page over, revealing more vivid colors, the sparkling of metallic fabrics, rhinestones, and adornments, gleaming in artificial light. She traced a fall of crushed velvet with one finger, liking the feel of the glossy paper, wishing she were touching fabric even more.

Here and there, she seemed to catch a glimpse of feeling, but it was always something she didn’t have a name for. None of it matched anything she’d experienced, and something of the unnamable sensation seemed to leap into her, a kind of opening-up. Or fall. That was the best she could do to describe it: it felt like something (that was also her) falling inside her, down and down into darkness. She didn’t want the feeling to stop.

She didn’t end up reading anything. She just looked at the beautiful women in their beautiful clothes, and for the first time discovered a concrete shape to her vague desire to escape. She wanted the alien models to come and take her away.

They were like her. She wanted the tall taut creatures in their colors and shapes (they couldn’t be clothes, clothes were what she wore to school and the boring shapeless things her mama came home in, stained and wrinkled) to come and take her away so she wouldn’t have to put smiles on her face when she didn’t want to and so she, too, could learn how to lie in wait for her prey.

A year later, after Oksana stabbed a boy on the playground with his pen and after they told her she had to go away, she pulled her mother’s magazines out from under the bed in the hiding place and methodically ripped them to pieces. Neither she nor her mother cried when the officers from the juvenile detention center came to the house to take her away.

 

### Moscow, 2011.

 

She couldn’t stop twirling. The flowers—huge, exotic, brightly printed on— kaleidoscoped together into a sunset as the skirt fanned out around her, silk smooth as Anna’s skin.

It had cost almost fourteen thousand rubles. Not hers, obviously. She’d taken the stash of money Max thought his wife didn’t know about hidden behind the radio. There was more than that, but any more on the dress and she wouldn’t have been able to afford the five-layer cake in its splendid pride of place on the coffee table in the middle of the living room.

Soon she’d be able to afford better. Paris. Anna could speak French and teach Russian instead of the other way around, and Oksana would—would—

Well. They would be together, in Paris, and _that_ was what mattered. They would be together and wearing the clothing from the fashion magazines, of which this dress would be the first and least.

Maxim Leonova was not a well-dressed man, right down to his last day. Colorless corduroys, coarse white socks, a dingy red sweater vest. The sweater vest’s color had only been improved by blood.

Oksana breathed out, slowly. She’d been thinking about this for so long. Gone through every step so often, til she could still do the litany without a thought. Don’t go for strangulation, too much potential for struggle. Get behind him (“No, Mr. Max, you don’t need to get up, I’m only waiting for Mrs. Leonova—” he didn’t like it when she called Anna _Anna_ — “Your shoulders look so tense! Let me feel them. Oh, yes, very tense.”) Start with the carotid. Go for the strongly-pulsing artery, use the base and side of your hand, locked against your wrist. Hold on through struggles. By the time her grip changed, he’d already been trying, desperately, to get out of the chair, but her weight against and behind him was too much. Soft skin against her arm and hand, and the collar of his shirt had kept sliding, back and forth, against her as she worked. Back and forth.

It really was strange, that she kept still _anticipating_ what she’d already done.

V considered the dead man’s shirt. It had a garish, stupid polka-dot pattern, too big and not colorful enough. She ought to burn it. Maybe they could burn it together? Against her dress, it looked even worse.

It was very inconvenient, trying to pull it off the corpse. The body itself tipped, this way and that, wobbling when she tried to position him and overbalancing when she switched grips. He flopped gracelessly, like his limp severed dick. There had to be an easier way to move bodies.

Oksana was fussing with the masses of balloons when Anna came home. As soon as she heard the lock click, she abandoned the recalcitrant balloon and the proud cake, and bolted towards the door, bounding over the footstool at the base of what had been Max’s chair.

“Welcome home, _ma cherie_ Anna!”

Anna stiffened in alarm, her eyes darting behind Oksana, but whatever she was going to say died on her lips when she spotted the contents of her living room.

The skirt flowed and flared when Oksana bounced up to the older woman, fanned out when she twirled, unable to stop grinning. “Do you like them?”

Anna swept her gaze across the room, taking in the bright balloons, the towering cake, the expensive swishing of Oksana’s dress. “My goodness, Oksana, what’s going on here?” she said, laughing, stepping in while Oksana danced an orbit around her.

Despite the laughter, the question was a real demand. “I got you a present!”

“We agreed I’d take you out to dinner to celebrate you graduating, not—”

“This is much better than dinner, I promise.”

“If we’re not celebrating you graduating and finally being free of me—”

Oksana interrupted, and they spoke over each other on the last few words:

“—then what are we celebrating?”

“I’ll never be free of you.”

There was an awkward silence. Awkward even to Oksana, for whom silences were seldom awkward.

She had always found it alluring, and annoying as hell—the emotional stew that sometimes roiled on Anna’s face. Currently, it was especially thick, and in consequence, Oksana was tipping further towards anger. Why couldn’t she just be _happy_?

“I’ll show you.” Retrieving Anna’s hand, Oksana tugged her into the bathroom, and, with a proud flourish, pulled aside the shower curtain. “Look!”

It was like something in Anna fell away, like something collapsed inward. Oksana, a mirror without willing it, fell in confusion with her. She had never seen anything like it in Anna. “Anna? What’s wrong?”

She opened her mouth to speak, and shut it. She reached out as if to touch, and yanked her hand back. She swallowed convulsively, and when Oksana got a look at her face saw that she’d gone almost green.

“Anna?”

Without taking her eyes from the body, Anna asked, “Is that a new dress? How did you get it?”

Oksana smoothed a hand down the fabric across her hip, smiling almost shyly. “Do you like it?”

“I _hate_ it.”

Oksana grinned. “You’re lying.”

“Yes.”

Finally, Anna looked at her. Her face was dead, eyes flat and mouth bloodless. She seemed not to be able to move, and something about it frightened Oksana.

Oksana slipped into French, marshalling her accent and the lovely words to work for her. “Please, my beloved, I did everything you asked me to—I waited, you’re not my teacher anymore, I’m not in school anymore, I’m not a child anymore, please come away with me. We’ll see Paris—you’re not married anymore, you can do anything you want—”

“I want,” Anna said, her Russian cold and crisp, every syllable sliding into place even as her lips trembled, “you to get away from me.”

“You don’t mean that.” Oksana took a step forward, head ducked to see up into Anna’s turned-aside face. “How many times have you said that and not meant it?”

Anna didn’t step away. “You’ve never—you’ve never—” Something in her had snapped, and the superficial calm was gone. Her eyes flickered up to Oksana’s, then away, her breathing fast and panicky.

“I’m sorry it’s such a shock. I thought you knew.”

Anna laughed, shrill.

“It’s all going to be better now,” Oksana promised, and kissed her.

Anna’s lips were cold from the outdoor air, and soft, and Oksana could smell the herbal scent of her shampoo still lingering in the clouds of her black hair, and Anna was totally still for a long moment. Then she convulsed under Oksana’s hands on her waist, and bit Oksana on the mouth.

“Hey!” Oksana gave a strangled shout and leapt back, hip knocking into the sink. “What the hell did you do that for?

There was a smear of her blood on Anna’s mouth, like a first stroke of lipstick. The color would have suited her, if she hadn’t gone so ghoulishly pale. Iron pooled on Oksana’s tongue.

Anna was trembling. When she opened her mouth, flecks of blood painted her teeth too. She screamed, “ _Get away from me!_ ”

Oksana wanted to scream back but she didn’t know what. So she just screamed.

Everything had gone wrong and she didn’t know _why_ , didn’t understand what was happening—

She saw it coming. Anna had probably never even been in a childhood scuffle, so when she stepped forward and started swinging, it couldn’t have been plainer if she’d written a letter about it first.

Oksana stopped screaming, and let the slap land. It didn’t have enough force to twist her face away, but it left her cheek tingling and raw.

Anna left her hand in the air, brought it back almost to touch Oksana’s face. “Oksana.” Her voice softened, a strange note entering her voice. Anna’s expression had cracked open, like the slap had landed on her own face, but Oksana couldn’t tell what any of it meant. She had never been able to tell what it meant. Anna took a step toward her. “Oksana—”

The door burst open with a sickening, splintering thud, and one after another a trio of men in shiny black uniforms poured inside. Anna gave a little scream, but it was drowned out by the drumming of boots.

Anna had both hands over her mouth. She took them down when the police got to her. “Don’t fight back,” she said, still in Russian, urgent and sharp, and Oksana didn’t.

 

### Moscow, 2013.

 

She shook the first prison guard off with a heel backwards into the woman’s knee, but when a second guard hooked arms behind and around Oksana’s shoulders, they managed to tow her backwards and away from her target. Oksana felt her feet leave the ground, and gave up.

Across the exercise yard, a third guard had the struggling prisoner Oksana had been tussling with in a headlock—hardly necessary. The other woman hadn’t exactly been keen to fight. Oksana tried to remember her name.

“I’m reporting you to the warden,” the headlocking guard announced. With satisfaction, she added “That’s going to be another six months on your sentence, Astankova.”

Oksana couldn’t see the other prisoner’s face, but she was pretty sure she’d given her a black eye. Nadia—that was her name.

“So anxious to keep me around? All you had to do was ask!” Oksana bared her teeth at the guard, and kept up the expression through the baton cracking down on her back.

 

———

 

They threw both Oksana and Nadia together on kitchen duty. Not cooking, but cleaning the back end, behind the stoves and ovens, scrubbing at grease with rags almost as greasy as the surfaces, and trying to avoid burning themselves on perpetually hot metal. One of Nadia’s hands sported a just-stopped-bleeding slash. Oksana couldn’t remember, but she thought she’d probably bitten it.

“Why did you attack me?”

“Shut up.” Oksana directed a glare at the other prisoner, up at the guard standing—by now very bored—by the kitchen entrance, back to Nadia kneeling next to her. “Do you want the guards to come finish what I started?”

Nadia dropped her voice, but did not shut up. “I think they’re hoping I kill you.” Oksana scoffed; Nadia rode over her. “You know they all hate you, right?”

Oksana grinned, and said, deeply pleased, “I know.” Nadia shot her a look equal parts disgust, anger, and bafflement. “Why don’t you try it?” Oksana coaxed.

Now Nadia’s look was all anger. “I’m not stupid. So I’m not going to believe that you just attacked me for no reason.”

“No, I didn’t like your clothes.” Oksana scrubbed white-knuckled at a particularly stubborn bit of grime between the wall and a table.

“I’m wearing the same thing as everyone else.”

“They’re horrible, and they make everyone ugly.”

“They make everyone the same,” Nadia corrected.

“What’s the difference? You should thank me for making your outfit a little more interesting.”

“By ripping my shirt to shreds and getting blood on my pants?”

“It adds a pop of color.” Maybe she could get rid of the girl another way. “It suits you.”

The girl suddenly, beneath her bruised cheek (V had rammed her face-first into a table after she elbowed Oksana in the kidneys), blushed.

_Oh,_ thought Oksana, attention sharpening. _Interesting._

Nadia looked away, and made to reach down into the grimy gap between wall and table with her bloody hand. Oksana grabbed her wrist. “Don’t.”

Nadia yanked her arm back, twisting her wrist to try and pop free. “What—”

Oksana let her hand go. “Don’t get that cut dirty. It could get infected.”

Nadia looked down at her hand as if she hadn’t realized the wound was still open. “Oh.” She grimaced. “Thank you.”

“I give good advice.”

Back to scrubbing, she thought the conversation over until she heard Nadia take a deep breath. She blurted, “What would—you said our clothes are horrible. What would you dress me in? If you could, I mean.”

Oksana looked blank. “I wouldn’t.”

Maybe it was the crestfallen look on the other girl’s face—she loved looking at faces when they got ugly—or maybe it was just the hated helplessness seeping into her from the prison that had driven her to start the fight in the first place that now made her add, “I’d undress you though.”

 

———

 

_I am never going to see anything nice again_ , Oksana thought, staring at the cracked concrete ceiling above her bunk. It looked as if it were one good thump away from crumbling into an avalanche down onto her head, so, as she did every night, Oksana stared it down until it was no longer unsettling.

Beautiful—sure. There was Nadia, beaming at her after Oksana fucked her; there was the clean gorgeous thrill of putting someone down in pain with her bare hands garnished with blood; there was the iron perfume of blood itself. But nothing _nice_. She was never going to feel expensive linen on her skin again, never going to smell subtle perfume; never feel a fresh croissant melt in her mouth; never see Paris at all—but that brought a fresh surge of helpless fury—better not think about Paris now. Better to think about other wishes.

So—she couldn’t stay in prison. Always before when she wanted something, opportunities came along. She just had to grab the right one.

 

### Paris, 2015.

 

She was dressed practically, and all in black. Villanelle wore high-waisted leather pants with a long strap that wrapped around and around her natural waist, cinching the leather in and leaving the top of the pants to jut back out over a simple silk short sleeve top. Nothing memorable, nothing so unremarkable as to be remarkable, nothing that would get in the way of changing a line of models into and out of clothes much more eye catching than her own.

She had begged Konstantin for this assignment. He’d teased her, saying he wasn’t sure she was ready to go for that high profile and public a kill. He was just trying to drive her to train harder, and she knew it, but it worked—this time. She was confident; Paris Fashion Week was as bustling as promised, but no match for her.

Today she was Emiliya, a fashion student studying abroad, taking her place backstage as a dresser in the motley crew of students, interns, aspiring designers, a professional theatre dresser, and—strangest of all—a handful of members of a group calling themselves Models for Christ. They were not models.

They were called in an hour before the show was scheduled to start, though, as tardiness was not to be tolerated, most of them had gathered early in a staging area. She listened in as they made awkward anxious chatter with each other. There was a student dressed to the nines, as if she expected to be suddenly called should a model happen to have a twisted ankle or some other dire accident. She was going to be out of luck. These were highly vetted professionals; they wouldn’t take some nobody from the local parish—her handlers only got her in by dint of their many connections—and it would take actual unconsciousness before anyone would lie down on the job. No—the only “unforeseen accident” here would happen not backstage, but to a certain high-end boutique owner and D-list instagram celebrity, who happened to be laundering money for a branch of the Corsican mafia through his shop.

One of the Models for Christ lot turned to her, trying to loop her into a conversation she was having with one of the interns, each talking at odds with each other, trying and failing to be subtle, the one trying to proselytize, the other trying to network.

“How about you? Have you found a spiritual home since you’ve gone abroad?”

Villanelle tilted her head, and started her directly in the eyes. “Oh no, I accepted Satan in my home country and he follows me across borders.”

The intern nearly choked trying not to laugh.

“Well! There’s no need to be rude about it!” the other woman huffed, spinning on her heels away from her and retreating back to one of her colleagues.

Villanelle was saved from further nonsense by the appearance of the lead dresser—a brusque and efficient woman who looked ready to kill anyone who dared waste precious seconds of her time with small talk or stuttering out their requests. Villanelle liked her very much. She showed everyone to their stations, giving out a stack of poster boards along the way, each detailing every look each dresser would be responsible for and their order. Villanelle looked at her rack of garments, mentally matching the polaroids on her boards to their corresponding items, quickly memorizing their locations so nothing would trip her up in the scant minutes she had with each model. She ran her fingers over the seams of the first dress on the rack. She’d tuned the chaos surrounding her out into a background hum, focused completely in on the intricate workmanship under her fingers.

Her reverie only lasted a moment before she was interrupted by a very flustered, and very stylish, PA.

“Do _you_ have an extra one of the metal harnesses? _Someone_ is missing one, and I know it’s not stolen this time—I mean, that would just be _pointless_ to do pre-show, wouldn’t it?”

Villanelle did a brief assessment of this woman. She was wearing a stiff cropped jacket with what looked like Hungarian folk embroidery on it—little red, yellow, and white flowers—and faux closures down the open front, over a thin billowing white blouse that twisted and tied at the high neck. A wide black belt with a single small front buckle nipped the flow of her shirt in around her waist, and the outfit was finished with a smart red skirt that stood out nicely against her dark skin. She had lovely natural hair, braided around the crown of her head, the thick braid trailing down her right shoulder.

“Hm? The harnesses…” she turned to go through her rack. “How many am I supposed to have?”

“Just the one.”

Villanelle pulled a chain of golden coils off of a hanger. “They must have gotten ...tangled together.”

“Oh thank fuck! I owe you one!”

“Careful—I collect. I’m Emiliya—and you?”

“Kathryn.”

“Kathryn.” Villanelle pursed her lips, preparing a half-lie. “You look like one of the grandmothers from my village—”

“Oh—”

“—but sexy.”

“Oh! ... Thanks?”

A voice barked out across the room. “Kathryn! Did you find it?”

“Coming!” She turned to Villanelle, a half smile on her face. “Time to go keep the known universe from collapsing or something.”

Villanelle let herself slide into the bustle, cataloguing the way everyone interacted, filing it away for use later in the evening, and carefully avoiding the backstage photographers. Showtime loomed, and her first model appeared before her, stylist in tow.

She slid the girl into a deep red velvet sheath, painted with golden leaves around the border and a byzantine design over the model’s navel. As her model turned, the two heavy slabs of velvet bookending her parted, giving way to an expanse of silk pleats, a lesser red with the gold paint still shimmering along the bottom, drawing the eye to the girl’s unshod, bejewled feet. Her stylist finished touching up her face to look perfectly bare, if idealized, and made certain that the show’s signature headdress—a golden serpent—curled around her temples and lay perfectly at rest.

_Ready to strike,_ Villanelle thought. _She looks like a girl sacrificed to the gods. One who came back, a god demanding blood herself._

Once the show had properly started, the ambient chaos coalesced into a hurricane of flying hands and couture. Villanelle’s attention narrowed down to the girl in front of her, stripping off red velvet and trading it in two minutes flat for a sheer bone-colored dress, tightly gathered on top and blooming out into a voluminous skirt, painted with bronze trees, and adorned with the troublesome golden harness. Trading the bone dress for a white burnout velvet cape, draping the model entirely, like a secret. The model, in turn, seemed much more collected than she had been—each having entered into the driven single-minded focus of performance. It was something Villanelle could respect.

The pièce de la résistance, and the final one she had to put on the model, was a floor length mossy green gown, the skirt made of brocade velvet, the top sheer with velvet shapes that had been cut out and strategically appliqued on. With the final outfits about to show, the backstage crew was allowed a momentary lull.

Villanelle took this moment slink up behind Kathryn, who was occupied watching as the models started their parade in the small space before they entered into the audience’s view. She watched a few go by, unnoticed by the PA, before leaning in and whispering, so as not to carry, “High fashion is very lesbian.”

Kathryn started, but, to her credit, didn’t make a noise. She turned, laughing, to slide a touch up Villanelle’s forearm. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“The dresses. Look at them! They’re only meant to exist amongst themselves.”

“How’s that?”

“Can you imagine them next to a boring suit? Even a nice suit. No no—” she cut of any potential objection before it could start— “No man could even be a suitable accessory. They’re designed for a totally different world.”

Kathryn paused to consider. “...Maybe so. Though if you ask me, maybe you’re the one designed for a different world.”

“Maybe so,” she echoed. “Find me after the show if you want to find out.”

Another pause. “I have a job to finish first.”

“That’s all right. So do I.”

The show ended, as abruptly as it started, a stream of photographers and press rushing backstage to interview the designer, parting the women like the sea.

 

———

 

The morning light in Paris was something Villanelle could get used to, she thought, strolling down a cobblestone street. Maybe it was just her mood—she’d executed her kill flawlessly, her handlers would be pleased, and she’d made a enjoyable alibi for herself. Even if her partner had been less layered than her clothing. A shame, really. She had hoped—maybe hadn’t realized that she’d hoped—that some of those beautifully dressed people understood they were in masks and costumes—that some of them were using them like she was. Well. Nothing was perfect.

Her phone rang.

“Good _morning_ ,” she sang. “So—am I your favorite?”

“You did a good job,” Konstantin affirmed, after a moment’s consideration on whether he should say so. He did that a lot. “Next time we have another fashion person, I’ll give it to you.” Like he was giving her a birthday present. “Plenty of opportunities to plan your next wardrobe.”

 

### London, 2018.

 

Villanelle paused for a long moment, admiring the line of the woman’s neck, the sharp angles of her jet black hair, in marked contrast to the austere white room, the long precise arcs of her hand over the expensive sketchbook paper.

Sueko Ikeda looked up. Light gleamed off a hinge on the frame her small black reading glasses, and traced lines down from there to the whisper-fine gold chain around her neck, breaking the expanse of flawless age-thinned skin between the asymmetrical lines of her blouse. She was wearing, Villanelle knew, over two thousand euro worth of clothes to sit here in her showroom and work on her next design, which would be worth ten times as much.

She was beautiful. Not just her features—though that too; Villanelle’s eye caught on the broad high lines of her cheekbones—but in her posture, her movement, her position, her clothes. It was difficult not to be beautiful in a perfectly fitted bespoke blouse and pants. (Some people could manage it—Villanelle thought of a crooked stockbroker she’d killed who wore his painfully fashionable suits like workout clothes, and suppressed a moué of disapproval.)

Ikeda certainly didn’t have a problem with it. Her frown of disapproving puzzlement simply made her look more poised. “Are you here from _Jalouse_? Because you weren’t supposed to collect pieces until tomorrow.”

“No, ma’am,” Villanelle said with mock solemnity.

“No you’re not supposed to pick up tomorrow or no you’re not with _Jalouse_?”

“I’ve been sent by someone rather more important than that.”

She clicked her teeth in disapproval. “Youth. You always think whoever you’re with is the most important, the most _au-courant_ , _avant-garde_. Come back when you’ve made an appointment.”

Villanelle laughed, charmed. It was a pleasant laugh, she’d been told, but it set the designer on edge.

She looked up for the first time, and stared Villanelle in the eyes, considering for a long moment. Whatever she saw there—whatever spark or lack—forced a tiny breath of horrified realization. “Ah.” She smoothed her expression out, understanding giving her back her poise. “You’re not who I imagined you’d be. What do you want?”

“May I try on your dress?”

A normal person might have glanced down at what she was wearing, but Ikeda knew what she meant immediately, and looked instead farther into the cavernous room, towards a dressform burdened with a sculpture of dimensional textiles, and surrounded by pins, scissors, and an assortment of little tools, as if it was just finished. She drew in a careful breath, steeling herself.

“If you think it would suit you.”

“Do _you_ think it would suit me?”

“I don’t know that my opinion matters all that much in the current situation.”

Villanelle smiled. She liked this woman. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy watching the stuttering panicking breathy messes that fear created in otherwise powerful people. She did. But rarity made everything precious, and this reaction was a first in Villanelle’s career of kills.

The pair made their way through free-standing rectangular archways, formed by monumental rectangular iron-cage pillars dividing the room, past iron racks stretched between pillars that held rows of the bold sculptural garments Ikeda was known for.

As they passed a showcase wall that was designed to look artfully crumbling, Villanelle had to break the silence.

“I like your space.”

No response.

“Was it designed to make people feel like they were shrinking?”

“Did you read articles about me so you could paraphrase journalistic interpretation back in question form as an intimidation tactic?”

“No. Maybe. I was interested. They were interesting. ...I knew who you were!”

“Mm.”

Villanelle stepped towards her goal—a white growth of fabric, that one would really only call a dress out of habit. There was a mass of densely packed ruffles that grew upwards from the navel, like a pinecone or a coneflower turned on its head, pushing aside overlapping folds of thick cloth and leather in its wake, and extending up to the top of the neck, leaving the head to emerge - barely - from its cocoon. Sueko quickly bent down and cleared her tools to the side, wanting to protect them from careless trampling, even as her own physical integrity was in peril.

“You’re going to need help getting into it.”

“I couldn’t separate an artist’s hands from the finishing touches of a masterpiece, could I?” She could, of course, but had no wish to here.

The body of the dress was mountainous ridges of stiff fabric, and Sueko pulled her little footstool over to step up and drape it around Villanelle’s shoulders.

“Turn.”

She tied small thick cords from the edges of the front openings through loops inside each opposite side, lifting the panels and letting them gently thud back down when they were secure.

Sueko stepped back down and undid a small bit of lacing at the back of the neckpiece, where four short steel bones made a spine that held the ruff—and the wearer’s neck—upright. She lifted it up over the dummy, stepped back up, and reversed the process over Villanelle.

Villanelle could feel Sueko's hesitation as she reached the back of her neck, a hesitation after adjusting the piece into place, hands lingering for a moment at her neck, palms resting against the grommets and lacing.

“Don’t ruin this by trying to strangle me now!”

A further momentary hesitation. “I couldn’t through this structure if I tried.”

“You could still try. People do, you know.”

She stepped back, off the stool, dusting her hands on her stomach as she walked around to face Villanelle. “I have no time to waste on the inefficiencies of dogmatic optimism.”

Villanelle pursed her lips into a tiny smile of approval, tapping her pointer finger on her nose twice then pointing it at Sueko. She turned her attention to the dress.

“It’s so heavy!” Villanelle gave a gleeful little bounce.

“Around twenty-seven kilos,” the designer said, as though it were a reflex.

“Two of these and you’d have the pack I wore for marathons while training.”

“Two hundred of these and you’d have half the fabric I’ve balanced and shaped.”

Villanelle let herself sink into her thoughts and feel her body in the dress for a moment, lifting her arms, seeing how she and it moved together. She liked the look, but more than that she liked the feeling of it—especially the way the ruffles surrounded her face. It reminded her of a story she’d read in one of her mother’s magazines years and years ago, once she had started to read a little English. It was about a future progression of dresses farther and farther away from the body and conventional notions of wearability. At the end the dresses became houses that the women lived alone in. It was probably supposed to be a satire of some couture trend the author thought stupid, but the image had stuck with Villanelle, something about it resonating with—maybe even shaping— her notion of the world.

What would happen if she just...let her go?

“You’re incredible. Do you know that?”

Sueko Ikeda turned back, framed in the iron archway, the singular focal point in a vast expanse of emptiness. “I do my job. I create something out of the void. Maybe it makes someone feel something.”

“It does.”

“Yes.” She whispered. “Yes. It does.”

It was a shame really, because this woman seemed to understand a part of her no one else had. But that resonance could only compel towards the beautiful, carefully chosen, antique embroidery scissors in her pocket, and her own job she had to do.

She left wearing the designer’s signature coat, with not even a drop of blood on it.

 

### Berlin, 2018.

She held the black and white Roland Mouret dress up to her body in front of one of the boutique’s many mirrors, and caught one of the assistants looking at her in the reflection. It must be embarrassing, for a certain type of person, to be caught admiring oneself. Well, embarrassment was an attractive look sometimes. 

How interesting to not be shopping for oneself for a change!


End file.
